Actually, I would love to see you first drawings. It would be interesting how far your skills have improved. I'm totally jealous! I consider myself having average drawing skills, but when it comes to portraits or faces, I'm totally awful at it.

I echo some of the above comments with the "I wish I could draw" -- and up it to a question: Do you have any suggestions for what to draw every day in order to improve?

definitely faces. I drew a portrait a day for awhile. It doesnt have to be a completely polished one, but as long as you block in basic shadows and get all the features in. and ones from references, too, not just ones from your head. animal books are helpful too. i dont find drawing still lives very helpful at all. Definitely people from reference though, as much as possible. I used to draw people on the bus/train a lot, but sometimes it makes you feel creepy, hahah

From the sketching I've done, faces seem to be the hardest for me, so I guess it makes sense to practice those the most. Whenever I do any drawing (which admittedly is rarely), I generally end up doing lines, then filling in the body, adding clothes and hair, and then I leave the face blank. All of my work is kinda strange because of that, but oh well. It looks kinda cool.

Are there any tricks for knowing approximately where to place features, like how far down the eyes go, where the mouth goes, and so on, or is it mostly guesstimation and erasing/retrying?

From the sketching I've done, faces seem to be the hardest for me, so I guess it makes sense to practice those the most. Whenever I do any drawing (which admittedly is rarely), I generally end up doing lines, then filling in the body, adding clothes and hair, and then I leave the face blank. All of my work is kinda strange because of that, but oh well. It looks kinda cool.

Are there any tricks for knowing approximately where to place features, like how far down the eyes go, where the mouth goes, and so on, or is it mostly guesstimation and erasing/retrying?

Thanks for your suggestions!

Theres a lot of art instruction books that have good information on it, i used to just go to the library, usually anything involving the figure will have a chapter on the face, i reccomend bridgeman the most. i also downloaded a bunch of art books off the internet as torrents, that comes in handy a lot easier than trying to hold a book open

But there is a mathematical way of breaking up the face, i can explain it kinda, but its hard without a picture to go from.The eyes are halfway between down the face, from the very top of your head (not where the hair is) to the bottom of the chin. which is why its better to draw a head bald when first putting on features, so everythings placed right. The bottom of the nose is halfway between the eyes and the chin, and then the mouth is halfway between the nose and the chin. everyones face isnt perfectly matched up to these, but pretty close.The ears are between the eyes and nose on a face. just under the eyes, just above the bottom of the nose. the width of a face is about five of your eyes wide. so if you measured one of your eyes, that same width should be on either side of the eyes, and the eyes should be one eye apart. (does that make sense?) Theres no real measurement for eyebrows since everyones are so different.all this works for drawing a face that is straight on. Once parts of the front of the face are hidden it becomes harder to use those measurements for everything.

If you wanna ask me more stuff, you can just talk to me on AIM: the dullwaydown , or Yahoo: loveandasandwich